LimeSDR Transmitting Voice and Data with SDRAngel

Over on the LimeSDR facebook group Marty Wittrock (KN0CK) has been experimenting with his LimeSDR and SDRAngel. SDRAngel is a general purpose SDR program similar to SDR#/HDSDR/SDR-Console etc, but with the key difference that it is designed to incorporate TX features as well. SDRAngel has releases available for Linux and Windows.

Marty writes that in early August SDRAngel programmer Edouard (F4EXB) resolved most of the issues with LimeSDR compatibility and now TX and RX in SDRAngel with the LimeSDR works great.

SDRANGEL/LIMESDR WINDOWS UPDATE – WORKING!: …For the first time in 18 months the LimeSDR has a working Windows transmit and receive application..! Check out the video for more, but for those that don’t use Linux, you can now experience full transmit and receive using the Win32 SDRAngel version 3.5.5 and Zadig 2.2 that loads the LimeSDR driver…Just load Zadig first as you normally would to select the LimeSDR (after you’ve initially installed it) and then launch SDRAngel…The application will allow you to operate ANYWHERE from 160m to 70cm using any demodulator and modulator you wish (AM, FM, SSB, CW, and more!). I tested it this evening from 40m to 10m to 2m tonight and it works EXCELLENT..!! Get in while the gettin’ is good – A full-up transceiver app now exists for the LimeSDR and this is just the beginning..! 73 de KN0CK

LIMESDR/SDRANGEL UPDATE: Yours truly the mad scientist, playing with the LimeSDR on HF at 7.0 MHz here within the shack (no external antennas applied) TRANSMITTING NO DELAY ON HF LOWER SIDEBAND USING SDRANGEL AND THE LIMESDR..!! FINALLY, an app that supports receive and transmit for the LimeSDR is available free of charge and WORKS PERFECTLY..!! See it for yourself on the attached video…And I do have the recipe for this since it’s on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04) for now…A Windows 7/10 build IS planned…A RED LETTER DAY FOR THE LIMESDR..!! #LimeSDR #SDRAngel #HF 🙂 !!

Did you read any of the release notes which mention problems with insufficient resources on the RPi hardware (“Do not compile the broadcast FM demod plugin when the host is a Raspberry Pi because of insufficient memory”). Or search through the issues which mention no hope of getting it to work on “Raspbian Jessie”.

RPi hardware is not the right hardware to be using especially with a LimeSDR, unless you want to bang your head against the wall a lot, in which case most developers will tell you to solve your own problem. Why should they waste their life trying to solving problems caused by not having enough resources.

If anything, a developer smart enough to see the above gets a big thumbs up from me.

Even in the readme ( https://github.com/f4exb/sdrangel#debian-distributions ) it says “Please note that the ARM version is quite experimental and may or may not work depending on the hardware (it is very slow and unusable on a RPi3 for example). From release v3.5.1 there is no more ARMv7 distribution” the current version at time of writing is 3.7.0-1, there is a pre-compiled binary for the 3.51 (Jul 7, 284 commits ago) https://github.com/f4exb/sdrangel/releases you could download and install.

If you really want faster you could contact the developer and provide them with free hardware, people do not generally write software for hardware they do not own. I have no idea if the developer owns the hardware or not. If they don’t it might take a while for someone else who owns the hardware to familiarise themselves with and fully understand the base code and then to write and submit a patch(es).

And even if the developer owns the hardware already, there is only so much high quality code that one developer can produce per day, it is not like free software it is paying their bills.

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What is RTL-SDR

The RTL-SDR is an ultra cheap software defined radio based on DVB-T TV tuners with RTL2832U chips. The RTL-SDR can be used as a wide band radio scanner. It may interest ham radio enthusiasts, hardware hackers, tinkerers and anyone interested in RF.